How To Write a Resume's Career Summary

The Career Summary (sometimes called the Summary of Qualifications) is the most misunderstood components of a resume. Over the years, I've read summary statements that are short and boast about the candidate's team player ability. Other summary statements are mini-manifestos: long and meandering. How should a Summary be written? What's the purpose of a summary? Do you need one? These are the common questions I'll answer in this article.

Many people misunderstand the purpose of a Career Summary. While it seems rather obvious to me, it's not to many other people. So, let me define it: a career summary should summarize your resume's high points and reflect what the employer says it wants per the job ad. Not too difficult, right?

Not all resumes need a Career Summary. If you are an early career worker, you can go without a summary unless you have a specific set of skills that is relevant to the job opening you are applying to. For early workers, I usually opt for a Summary of Qualifications, which is a more basic list of job skills. Mid- or late-career workers should always have a Career Summary. By the time you've had 10 or more years of experience, your work life has gone through several cycles, industries or roles. The Career Summary gives a short "big picture" of this time period, as well as detailing the relevant skills desired for the job opening.

How do you write a Career Summary? It's a good question. My answer is: go to the job ad and see what the employer wants. Here's a job ad for an administrative assistant:

Basic Requirements

• Minimum of three years of secretarial/administrative experience, preferably in a legal environment.
• College degree or equivalent work experience.
• Excellent Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, Internet and PowerPoint skills; Access skills highly desirable.

Preferred Requirements

• Demonstrated oral communication, organizational, and writing skills.
• Ability to handle multiple projects, prioritize own work and exercise independent judgment.
• Ability to assess a situation and determine appropriate action in the absence of his/her supervisor.
• Ability to handle confidential information with discretion.

Let's reverse engineer these requirements to determine the categories of information the employer is seeking:

Basic Requirements:

1. Years of work experience in a specific work environment
2. Education
3. Computer skills

Preferred Requirements

1. Communications Skills
2. Project Management
3. Self-Directed 
4. Discreet

An effective Career Summary would contain these 7 pieces of information to reflect exactly what the employer is seeking. It could be written in the following way:

Career Summary

• 5 years of administrative office experience in a school environment. 
• Associates Degree in Office Technology
• Proficient with MS Office 2007
• Excellent verbal, written and public speaking skills including giving training to new employees
• Successfully managed projects in HR, Audio Visual and Curriculum Development areas
• Positive, upbeat and congenial person who takes ownership of a job to complete work on time
• Discreet person who respects managers, co-workers, students and visitors

This type of career summary of a resume is helpful to a recruiter who is trying to select candidates to call into the office for an interview. If the recruiter has to sift through your resume to find the years of experience or wade through the cliched terms such as "excellent team player," it only slows up the process. In essence, this structured Career Summary is all that a recruiter needs to select you as a viable candidate because it is a direct mirror of what the employer stated it want in the job ad.

Of course, a Career Summary for an administrative assistant is simpler to write than for an IT technician, for instance. But using the same process of going to the job ad and reviewing what the employer seeks, we can determine the categories of information that should appear in a technical career summary.

One caveat of writing Career Summaries is: don't overload with information and pack it with keywords. I have seen technical resumes where the career summary contained every computer language known to mankind! Yet, in the job narratives none of the keywords are used to explain how the candidate used these keyword skills to solve problems. A summary should be what it says it is: an overview of the resume that helps the resume reader absorb the salient information quickly.

How To Write a Resume When You Have No Job Experience

It boggles my mind that a college graduate would be allowed to graduate without an internship or some kind of practical experience on his record. I guess from the point of view of an academic institution the degree it awards should be all the new graduate needs to get an entry level job. But from the point of view of an employer who may receive hundreds of entry level resumes in job applications, a new college graduate without an internship or some kind of occupationally relevant experience (I'm not taking about fast food experience here) will not have as much hiring appeal as one who does.

As I write this blog entry, in my life as a job search consultant, I am working with a new graduate in accounting without an internship. He has received no interviews in the six months after graduation. Last year I worked with a chemical engineering graduate who chose to go to China and teach English instead of accepting an internship in chemical processing. While teaching English abroad is a noble thing to do and sounds like a great adventure, it isn't what prospective employers want to see on a resume. When he first contacted me, he said he was not getting any interviews. I asked him how his friends got their first jobs in chemical engineering upon graduation. Without hesitation, he said, "They were hired where they interned."

So, how do new graduates write their resumes if they have no internship or practicum in their field?  I've been asked this question a million times by new graduates. My first answer is: volunteer in an organization that needs your skills. My second answer is: sign up for temp jobs through online work platforms such as oDesk, eLance, or Vworker. These places hire people for very short periods of time and only care about what your skills not your work history. You can build up a work portfolio rather quickly. Then, go and look for a real job.

Writing a resume for someone who does not have any job experience is not as difficult as it sounds. Unfortunately, from what I have seen of resumes written with the guidance of college placement offices, the standard resume format is experienced-weighted. That is, most of the resume is filled up by an employment history. If you don't have a work history, good luck writing a resume with that format!

Let me get back to basics. What kind of raw information is described on a resume? They are:

• Knowledge: credentials and theory such as degrees, certifications, licenses, and areas where you have a lot of knowledge in.
• Skills: these are the job tasks that you can accomplish using the knowledge you have. fix a computer. give a flu shot (nurse), do a brake job, etc.
• Abilities: these are the work contexts that you could easily adapt to. office environment, cross-functional work team, lots of business travel, etc.

The above "raw" information is typically used in a standard resume format to describe your job experience. Call it the building blocks of a job history. But if you don't have a job history, you have to manipulate these building blocks in a different way (to fill up the page). Here is how the chemical engineering graduate used these building blocks to write his "no job experience" resume:

Areas of Chemical Engineering Knowledge

• Heat & Mass Transfer
• Transport Phenomena
• Thermodynamics
• Fluid Mechanics
• Statistical Process Control
• Computer Analysis/Simulation
• Material Science
• Experimental Lab Design

Core Competencies

Knowledge

• Knowledge and applications of aerospace transparencies.
• Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering.
• Basic understanding of chemical process engineering.
• Knowledge of laboratory and chemical safety procedures.

Skills

• Demonstrated leadership skills including accountability, results driven, integrity and trust.
• Excellent team participation skills.
• Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint.
• MATLAB
• SEM
• PRO II

Abilities

• Solving technical problems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional areas.
• Adapt to rapidly changing business priorities and assignments.
• Multi-task efficiently.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Willingness to travel for domestic and international assignments.

The above two sections take up about two-thirds of his resume. Add in the contact information and the education section and eighty percent of the resume is completed. Now, where did he get the terms in the Areas of Chemical Engineering Knowledge section? From the college course catalog for his major. In the Core Competencies section, he grouped his knowledge, skills and abilities in an expanded summary section. All in all, this type of resume emphasizes the building blocks of a job history, not the job history itself.

In the above example, the new graduate finally got hired. But it wasn't in chemical engineering per se. Rather, it was in an entry level chemistry position that required him to assist in experiments in a lab. This is one of the knowledge areas he listed in his Areas of Chemical Engineering Knowledge section of his resume.  This illustrates that if you have no job experience, your resume must focus on other things you do have: knowledge or skills.

How Jargon Can Help or Hurt a Resume

Jargon is specialized language used in a specific profession or industry. Medical terminology is a common type of jargon. Military jargon is another. Every industry has jargon. Jargon can help or hurt a resume's communication as well as search-ability in a resume database so it's good to know when and how to use it.

How does jargon affect a resume? For recruiters who do not understand the jargon, the resume can read like ancient hieroglyphics with few if any of them understanding what it is being communicated -- not a result a job seeker wants to happen! But for the right audience, jargon can speed communication and make it more effective. In the age of online recruitment, jargon has one more purpose: it is a ripe source of unique keywords; recruiters can use a phrase of jargon to search through hundreds of resumes to find a candidate of interest. In other words, jargon can improve a resume's database visibility.

When job seekers use jargon on a resume, they should seek a balance between the communication of unique skills as expressed by the jargon and the oversimplification of language that would eliminate the jargon altogether in the faux pursuit of clear communication. Let me give an example of the latter case.

In this example, a military veteran placed the following on her resume to describe her military experience:

• Secure classified documents to maintain proper accountability
• Managed receipts of logs, inventories, files
• Prepared military correspondence and documents for superiors
• Delivered personal mail in garrison and tactical environment

Since she removed the military jargon from the description of duties, most people would be able to understand what she did in the Army.  Yet, what remains is uninspiring language that describes skills anyone with a high school student could do. This veteran eliminated the benefits of military jargon so much she destroyed the positive and differentiating value of her military service.

Now, let's look at an example of how to use military jargon to improve a resume:

Example A

• Execute daily requests and track all ASR/AMRs via Secret Internet Protocol Router (SIPR) and Secret Voice over Internet Protocol (SVOIP) requiring access to SECRET classified information.

Example B

• INSPECTIONS / INVESTIGATIONS: Surveyed of mission essential and vulnerable areas (MEVAs) including arms, ammunition and explosives, and material/strategic supplies of US Army installations and activities on mainland Japan.

Example A includes quite a bit of jargon. But this military veteran (i) defined most of the jargon and (ii) crafted the statement in such a way that some readers can determine what he did. For the target audience who knows this jargon, the statement is very clear. Had he reduced it down to "Fulfilled daily requests of classified information" the value of the jargon would have been removed.

Example B improves on example A by providing an inline sub-head (i.e., Inspections/Investigations) that defines the subsequent statement. In essence, this veteran realized he had two audiences to communicate to so he wrote this statement for both the general reader and the target audience who understands the jargon.

Information Technology is another industry that is ripe with jargon. Here are a few examples:

Example 1

• Our team has decomposed the company's Regatta PLM process while embracing the Pragmatic Marketing framework to realign the skills, connections, and talent we have for NPD and Portfolio Management.

Example 2

• Full-blown PPM tools when applied to PML process did not provide the agility needed for rapid cycle, agile development. Evaluated Product Planning Management (PPM) tools but after detailed analysis we adopted a set of in-house tools for product development planning based on Microsoft collaboration and analytic products.

Example 1 contains two types of jargon: acronyms, such as NPD, and intra-industry denotations such as "decomposed" and "embraced." Acronyms are the most common and easiest to deal with -- simply define them. But new meanings or denotations for common terms is more difficult to deal with. As used here, "decomposed" refers to breaking down into its component parts to better understand the process to improve on it. Example 2 contains two sentences. The first sentence is jargonistic on both levels, while the latter sentences explains what they did in everyday language. The best solution for these instances of jargon is to define, preview and explain for both the general reader and the target audience.

Jargon can both help and hurt a resume. But it can also enrich the resume with a deeper level of keywords not on most resumes. Therefore, it can dramatically improve a resume's visibility for those people who use jargon to source candidates. In the end, the management of jargon is understanding that your resume has multiple audiences. Taking the time to write to both the everyday reader and the subject matter expert who knows the jargon can improve the effectiveness of your resume.

Tips on Posting a Resume to an Online Database

At some point, all job seekers will need to post their resume online whether it be for a job application, social recruiting site or a job board. On the face of it, the task of posting it online sounds rather easy. Click, upload and your done! Well, it's not always that easy. For example, sometimes the resume database software does not populate the fields of the database correctly. Nearly all resume databases allow you to manually check and modify your resume posting after uploading. But I have seen a few corporate career sites that appear to have been built in-house and don't offer the option to correct errors that occurred during resume uploads, but these are rare.

So, how do you post your resume online such that your career information is visible and your resume is frequently part of a recruiter's search results? This is the salient question for any job seeker who is not getting the callbacks that he or she expects. Remember, a resume database exists not only to keep track of the thousands or millions of potential job candidates, but also as a competitive ranking system. If your resume information has been posted in such a manner that it has a low ranking relative to other resumes in the database, your resume will be "invisible" and naturally receive fewer callbacks by recruiters.

Here are some tips of how to post your resume to a database so it is most visible in recruiters searches:

1. Completely fill out the resume profile. There are two types of resume databases: (1) resume is parsed and the career information is inputted into a single profile, or (2) resume is uploaded for viewing and downloads by the recruiter and a separate profile must be completed manually. The second option is how Monster.com has structured its resume database. If you only upload your resume to Monster without completing the profile, you will get few if any "saves."

2. Enter your keywords in the job title field. CareerBuilder used to indicate below the Job Title field of its resume database that this field is "what the employers will see when they perform a resume database search." In other words, this is one of the primary ways the software determines how to rank your resume. I have experimented with entering a personal name, a job title only, and a long list of keywords into the job title field on CareerBuilder. I have always found the personal name gets fewer searches than the long list of keywords. In addition, the most popular keywords are software or technical terms so make sure to include in your keyword string all your software skills with each separated by a comma. This will increase the likelihood of it being part of the search results.

3. Current job should match the job title field. Resume database software universally places the most emphasis on your current or most recent job. This is a departure from the pre-Internet days where years of experience ruled the day. Now, I am not suggesting that your years of experience are unimportant. I'm not. But, for a moment, think like an employer and a coder of resume database software. Employers assume that your freshest skills are the ones you currently use, not the ones you used 5 or 10 years ago. So, they would like to find someone for an open position who has recently been in the same type of position because they will be able to make an impact to the work team immediately (and without training or orientation). The coder will respond to this philosophy by ensuring the most current or recent job has greater ranking value than earlier jobs. And, in situations where both the most recent job (ex. Customer Service Manager) and job title keywords match (ex. Customer Service Manager, MS Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, etc.), the software will rank your resume higher and make it more "visible."

4. Break out different positions in the same company. If you have worked for one company over 10 or 15 years and held several positions within that company, make sure to separate each position as a separate employer. If you group all these positions into a single employer entry, you will decrease your ranking because you will rob yourself of keyword data. This is a big problem with military veterans. If a military veteran is a retiree who has 20 years of experience from the U.S. Army and places it in one employer entry, his or her resume will be essentially invisible in resume searches because the recruiter sees only the last job and not the person's entire career path.

5. Be creative about detailing your skills. All resume databases have a skills section. Since recruiters use either the job title or skills to search databases, you should also make sure you have a detailed list of skills. Start with your computer software or computer skills. Then, go into skills about roles (ex. project management, budgeting, etc.) and finally get creative and add types of equipment, writing, or other specific aptitudes that may not be commonly listed. This will also improve your ranking.

How To Make Adjustments to Your Resume to Increase Your Callbacks

Prior to the common use of online recruitment, a job seeker would write a resume and cover letter on a word processor and then go to the local printing office and order 100 copies. Then the resumes would be sent out by snail mail and the wait would begin. How times have changed! Today, printed resumes are infrequently used. Most resumes today are transmitted electronically. One of the advantages of online resumes is that it is much easier to make changes when a job search campaign warrants doing so. (Making changes to a paper resume was a hassle as well as an expense.)

Under what conditions would a job search campaign warrant you making a change to your resume? This question tends to confuse some job seekers because they see a resume as a job history or skills document, rather than a competitive marketing tool that's similar to a product brochure. The "key" word here is competitive. Different job campaigns have different levels of competition. To succeed in obtaining callbacks from online resume postings or applications, one usually needs to make adjustments based upon the level of competition you are likely to have.

How does job competition actually work? How do you know whether you will experience more or less job competition? Well, there are three types of competitive job campaigns. They are:

• Position
• Industry
• Combination (Position + Industry)

Position Campaigns
A positional campaign (commonly called the ‘lateral move’) is where a job candidate is looking for another position that is within the same industry or business line and is also the same type of job with same job title. For example: an administrative assistant in the financial industry who is looking for another administrative assistant job in the financial industry. Since skills, experience and corporate culture are likely to be the same in different companies within the same industry, this type of campaign has the least amount of job competition. It's also the easiest way to change jobs. The resume you used for your last job search could very well work for you in the next search. Of course, you would need to update your experience, skills and any training or education you obtained. 

Industry Campaigns
An industry campaign is where a job candidate is looking for the same type of job (title) or role but in a different industry. This happens during recessions a lot or when an industry is restructuring and lots of people are laid off. For example, an admin assistant with financial industry experience who was laid off and is now looking for the same type of job in an engineering consulting company or a manufacturing company or a doctor’s office would have this type of job campaign. This type of job search campaign is more competitive than the positional campaign because (a) skills gaps and (b) cultural differences and (c) the people who already have experience in this new industry are preferred over people who do not have this new industry experience. This means your resume needs to be adjusted for this new industry. To do so, review the job ad again. Look for language that suggest "industry experience." This could be a duty or it could be a productivity tool or even an industry certification. You need to close the "industry" gap as much as possible in order to compete against the industry veterans who are on the hunt for a new job.

Combination Campaigns
A combination campaign is a combination of a positional and industry campaign. This is where someone is looking for a different job (title) or role in a different industry. For example, an administrative assistant in the financial industry who is now looking to be a  project manager in the IT industry because of her new PMP certification. So, she has a competitive hill to climb. Not only is she competing for a new type of job, this new job is in a company in a different industry, which is likely to have different requirements and a different culture. It’s the most competitive type of job search campaign. To succeed in this type of campaign, your resume needs to communicate "rare" skills and capabilities. For this administrative assistant, she needs to find positions that need a project manager who has administrative assistant experience. Your resume needs to be much more detailed; that is, you need to overwrite your resume in order to completely convince the recruiter that you are better than the standard position & industry veterans who have applied to the same job.

Making resume adjustments is sometimes a trial and error procedure. In fact, sometimes the adjustments you will make are subtle. But, the goal is to mirror as closely as possible the profile that was used to create the job ad you read. These days employers are seeking the perfect job candidate. To do so, they look for the "right" person who matches not only the job's duties but also the work environment and the current project team. This, of course, introduces more competition into the hiring process that the old days of paper resumes.

How to Choose a Quality Resume Writer

There are both good and bad resume writers out there; between the state of the job market and the ease of operating a business online, many people are taking up resume writing as a service that is very much in demand. Before hiring someone to write your resume for you, you need to do your research into the writer’s background. Some things to look at include a website (if they have one), a portfolio, and any credentials or testimonials they have available. Here are some of the things you should do before hiring a resume writer:

1 – Check for Certifications
Make sure that the writer you are interested in hiring has some sort of certification or other credential in the field. Experience is also important, but credentials are easier to verify. You can do so online through the website of the company that issued the certification.

2 – Obtain the Writer’s Full Contact Information
Does the writer have their full contact information on their website? If not, ask them for it and verify it before doing business with them. Do not do business with anyone who will only give you their email address; if something were to go wrong you will need more than just an email address to take action.

3 – Track Down Testimonials
Whether they are testimonials, user reviews, or other user generated content regarding your chosen writer, you want to see positive stories about the experiences other people have had. Ideally you will want to find reviews that speak highly of both the writer’s skills and their customer service!

4 – Read Some of Their Other Work
Does the writer have any work you can review? Things like articles or blog posts about the job search industry would be very helpful to determine if the writer has a good command of the basic skills they will need to write your resume. These types of materials will also tell you how much the writer knows about job hunting and the industry in general.

5 – Get Their Policies First
Before hiring anyone, make sure to get their policies confirmed up front. Things like payment arrangements, payment terms, confidentiality agreements, and any other items you feel are important. These policies should be easily available through the writer’s website.

6 – Make Contact With The Writer
Ideally you want to make contact with the writer you wish to hire long before you hire them. Get to know them a little and get an idea of their fees. Ask any questions you might have and also take this opportunity to communicate what you expect to receive if you hire them. Resume writing is a collaborative exercise, and you will be counting on your resume writer to make things happen. They need to be able to live up to that potential!

How Grammar Problems Can Kill a Resume's Appeal

Resumes are often identified in resume databases or social recruiting sites based on keyword searches. So, many job seekers focus on getting the right keywords in their resume and profile to ensure they are visible in recruiter searches. But once a resume is identified as a good candidate for an open position, before a callback is made, the recruiter will review the resume to become familiar with a candidate. If your resume is ripe with spelling, grammar or word usage errors, your resume's appeal will be on the same level as bad breath.

I have reviewed hundreds of resumes over the years that have had grammar errors. I often wonder why. I can understand the innocuous error; we all make them. But serial language or spelling errors reveals a symptom of a more basic problem: a lack of understanding of the importance of language and communication in today's workplace. Sure, technical skills are of critical interest when sourcing a resume. If a recruiter needs a UNIX Administrator, she needs to find candidates with UNIX skills. But once identified, a job seeker must prove he or she can do the job, interact with other team members, write reports, consult with internal experts and external vendors, among others. Today's market replace requires more written communication skills since more work is going virtual.

So, how does a job seeker address his or her grammar problems? Well, the first step is recognize that grammar and written communication is not your strong suit. Then, get some help to not only correct the problem, but also to do remediation to learn how to correct the grammar problems on your own.

There has been a misguided belief that word processing software will catch these embarrassing problems. This is not true. I do a lot of writing over the course of my workday. Yes, I rely to some extent on the software to catch the most egregious and obvious grammar errors that usually are due to my less than stellar typing skills. However, before the final draft, I go through what I have written line by line to ensure I am communicating error-free.

So, beyond getting some outside help, how can you catch your grammar problems (especially if you aren't sure where they are)? If you are an experienced worker, and you have written language problems, it is unlikely that you have the time to learn to write perfectly. Well, I don't think you have to and that shouldn't be the goal. But, what you can do is learn a few of the most basic grammar problems and focus on correcting those. Doing so, your written communication will improve to the level that what remains is few and far between. So, let's go through the big ones:

Spelling: focus on headings, section headings and introductory information or the first word of a job duty description. If you get these items spelled right, and the recruiter skims your resume fast, any other problems may be skimmed over. When in doubt, I go to a search engine and type in the word. What usually appears is the dictionary entry, which is spelled correctly.

Tense Changes (Subject/Verb Mismatches): generally, resumes are written in the present or the past tense. It doesn't matter which one you use; just be consistent.  Here's an example:

Original:
Installed security software.
Helping users troubleshoot computer virus problems

Corrected:
Installed security software.
Helped users troubleshoot computer virus problems.

Misuse of the Apostrophe: this problem is one of the most glaring grammar problems that occur on resumes. An apostrophe is a punctuation mark that indicates (a) possession, (b) contractions and (c) plurality. Here are the examples:

Possession: Misuse: Bobs car; Correct Use: Bob's car.
Contractions: Original: should not; Revised: shouldn't
Plurality: Misuse: computer's were installed; Correct Use: computers were installed.

Wrong Word Usage: this problem will not be caught by word processing software if the worngly used words are spelling correctly.  Here's are a few common examples of word usage problems:

Their: indicates possession (Ex. Their car has bad brakes.)
There: indefinite pronoun (Ex. There is a car with bad brakes on the street.)

Run-On Sentence: This sentence fault is very common in all writing. The writer connects two separate sentences with no punctuation or improperly with a comma. The best way to deal with this problem is to write short sentences. Here's an example:

Run-On Fault: I inspected the computer, I fixed the problem in no time.
Correction: I inspected the computer. I fixed the problem in no time.

If you attempt to learn how to identify these four grammar problems and correct them, your resume will drastically improve its appeal. Granted, there are other grammar problems that can plague a resume. However, these are the most obvious ones and the easiest to correct.